Profile Books strana 17 z 22

If you feel like you have the same arguments with your partner over and over again ... you may be right. And you're not alone: Joanna Harrison believes there are five distinct issues that all couples have to work through if they are going to have a healthy, functioning relationship. Grounded in her experience as a couple therapist, she asks us to think about the difficulties we all have in our relationships - from how we communicate to what roles we take on and much more. Using sound advice and relatable case studies, she offers practical ideas and imaginative ways to think about ourselves and our partners. Kind, funny and rooted in real life, this is expert advice that anyone can use - and that everyone in a relationship needs.

In an era defined by stress and selfishness, self-care, and obsessive individuality, emptiness can offer peace. A balm for the soul of burnt-out Millennials - disillusioned with the search for meaning through career success, a beautiful life and a beautiful Instagram account - The Sunny Nihilist explains why achievement has not made us happy. Looking anew at a philosophy usually associated with grumpy pessimists, writer Wendy Syfret examines our modern experience of work, love, religion and wider society, and asks whether a touch of upbeat nihilism could actually lighten our loads. Making the case for rejecting the cult of purpose and accepting our un-importance in the universe as a positive reality, The Sunny Nihilist urges us to be cheerful in the face of it - because if nothing matters, we might as well be happy and good to each other.

Alison is newly married, barely twenty and struggling to find her place in the world. A chance encounter with an older artist upturns her life and she forsakes convention and her working-class Dorset roots for the thrumming art scene of London in the late seventies. As the thrill of bohemian romance leads inevitably to disappointment, Alison begins to find her own path - through art, friendship and love.

The world today rests on increasingly unstable fault lines. From the conflict in Ukraine or fresh upheavals in the Middle East to the threats posed to humanity by a global pandemic, climate change and natural disasters, the world's danger zones once again draw their battle lines across our hyperconnected, yet fragmented, globe. Join veteran Economist journalist John Andrews as he analyses the old enmities and looming collisions that underlie conflict in the twenty-first century. Region by region, discover the causes, contexts, participants and likely outcomes of every globally significant struggle now underway. From drug cartels to cyber war, this is the indispensable guide for anyone who wants to understand our perilous world.

Plunge into this rich, surprising and stunningly designed A-Z compendium to discover how our fixations have taken shape, from the Middle Ages to the present day, as bestselling author Kate Summerscale deftly traces the threads between the past and present, the psychological and social, the personal and the political.

Anat Levit never considered herself a cat lover, but when her life was thrown into upheaval, she found herself adopting one cat at the suggestion of her daughters, and then six more in quick succession. She recounts how each cat came into her life, their distinct demeanours and curiosities and their ability to live fully in each moment. Anat falls in love with the furry creatures, whose escapades and tribulations lead her into deep friendships, difficult decisions, and unexpected insight into her relationships. The cats love her in the way she wishes she could love others: intensely yet independently, without renouncing their unique personalities. By caring for these cats, Anat comes to a deeper understanding of her connections with former lovers, her daughters and her own body. In Seven Cats I Have Loved, she delves into the feline mind with sensitivity, gentleness, and compassion, while also revealing a moving human story.

Did you know that walking can improve your cognitive skills? That strengthening your muscular core reduces anxiety? That light stretching can combat a whole host of mental and bodily ailments, from stress to inflammation? We all know that exercise changes the way you think and feel. But scientists are just starting to discover exactly how it works. In Move!, Caroline Williams explores the emerging science of how movement opens up a hotline to our minds. Interviewing researchers and practitioners around the world, she reveals how you can work your body to improve your mind. As lockdown throws us back on our own mental and physical resources, there is no better time to take control of how you think and feel.

Once upon a time, a writer had an idea. They wrote it down. But what happened next? Join Rebecca Lee, professional text-improver, as she embarks on a fascinating journey to find out how words get from an author's brain to finished, printed books. She'll reveal the dark arts of ghostwriters, explore the secret world of literary agents and uncover the hidden beauty of typesetting. Along the way, her quest will be punctuated by a litany of little-known (but often controversial) considerations that make a big impact: ellipses, indexes, hyphens, esoteric points of grammar and juicy post-publication corrections. After all, the best stories happen when it all goes wrong. From foot-and-note disease to the town of Index, Missouri - turn the page to discover how books get made and words get good.* * Or, at least, better

As plants see it, humans are not the masters of the Earth but only one of its most unpleasant and irksome residents. They have been on the planet for only about 300,000 years ago (nothing compared to the three billon years of plant evolution), yet have changed the conditions of the planet so drastically as to make it a dangerous place for their own survival. It's time for the plants to offer advice. In this playful, philosophical manifesto, Stefano Mancuso, expert on plant intelligence, presents a new constitution on which to build our future as beings respectful of the Earth and its inhabitants. These eight articles - the fundamental pillars on which plant life is based - must henceforth regulate all living beings.

A witty yet moving narrative worked up from sketched biographical fragments, 1913 is an intimate vision of a world that is about to change forever. The stuffy conventions of the nineteenth century are receding into the past, and 1913 heralds a new age of unlimited possibility. Kafka falls in love; Louis Armstrong learns to play the trumpet; a young seamstress called Coco Chanel opens her first boutique; Charlie Chaplin signs his first movie contract; and new drugs like cocaine usher in an age of decadence. Yet everywhere there is the premonition of ruin - the number 13 is omnipresent, and in London, Paris and Vienna, artists take the omen and act as if there were no tomorrow. In a Munich hotel lobby, Rilke and Freud discuss beauty and transience; Proust sets out in search of lost time; and while Stravinsky celebrates the Rite of Spring with industrial cacophony, an Austrian postcard painter by the name of Adolf Hitler sells his conventional cityscapes.

If you were to master the twenty languages discussed in Babel, you could talk with three quarters of the world's population. But what makes these languages stand out amid the world's estimated 6,500 tongues? Gaston Dorren delves deep into the linguistic oddities and extraordinary stories of these diverse lingua francas, tracing their origins and their sometimes bloody rise to greatness. He deciphers their bewildering array of scripts, presents the gems and gaps in their vocabularies and charts their coinages and loans. He even explains how their grammars order their speakers' worldview. Combining linguistics and cultural history, Babel takes us on an intriguing tour of the world, addressing such questions as how tiny Portugal spawned a major world language and Holland didn't, why Japanese women talk differently from men, what it means for Russian to be 'related' to English, and how non-alphabetic scripts, such as those of India and China, do the same job as our 26 letters. Not to mention the conundrums of why Vietnamese has four forms for 'I', or how Tamil pronouns keep humans and deities apart. Babel will change the way you look at the world and how we all speak.